‘He keeps shagging these interns in his office, and then sending them to deliver files to me, still smelling of sex,’ she raged, ‘and they look so embarrassed, because they know who I am and what he’s doing. Though, I mean, they should know better than to sleep with their boss –’
‘Ah!’ Dana pointed.
‘I heard myself say it!’ Ame said. ‘Okay, so we all make mistakes! Women are victims, men are evil! I’m not blaming the sisterhood! Okay!’
‘Um,’ a male voice said into the stilted silence, ‘three much-needed margaritas?’
Tig looked up to see the new barman, standing awkwardly with a tray in his hand. Dirty blond hair, stubbled jaw, blue eyes. He was wearing a smart white shirt, rolled up at the sleeves to reveal old-school sailor tattoos on his forearms. Exactly the type to bartend at Entangled. Friendly enough, but always with enough edge to remind you they’re out of your league. Not that she was in anyone’s league, or looking to play a ball game of any sort. Tig realised no one had answered him.
‘Hi, yes, thanks! Desperately needed!’ She unnecessarily tried to clear some space on the table for him to put the drinks down. He twitched a smile at her, which she twitched back. Ame and Dana seemed to be having a huffing match about feminist standpoints under their breath, so she turned back to the new guy. She might as well be friendly, seeing as she was at Entangled more than her own home these days. You always wanted the staff on your side.
‘How’s the first day going?’
‘I’ve only broken three glasses and spilled ice all over the floor so that Ruby tripped head over arse,’ he shrugged. ‘Not at all mortifying.’
‘First time bartending?’ she asked. Am I prying? Why am I forcing this conversation when he’s clearly hovering about like he needs to go? Shut up, Tig.
‘Nope, just out of practice. And I’m going to blame jetlag, and first day nerves, and anything else I can think of! Just yell when you want the next round of drinks. I can almost guarantee I won’t screw them up,’ he winked and strode off.
Tig smiled, remembering how awful her first day had been in the SU bar, where she’d dropped a pint of snakebite down her front and the rugby team had made her swear so effusively she was sure she’d get fired. Instead the manager had patted her on the shoulder, given her a towel and said, as long as she kept that mouth on her, she’d make it through alive.
Tig turned back to see if her friends had stopped arguing. They had. In fact, they were both looking at her like she’d morphed into some sort of terrible sea creature.
‘What?’
‘You … him …’ Ame pointed at the bar, and Tig felt a violent irritation stir in her chest.
‘I had a conversation with Ruby’s new barman, Ame. It’s called being polite. It doesn’t mean I’ve suddenly solved all my problems, will get into a relationship, go back to work, get married and have babies,’ she spat. ‘It means I was tired of you two bitching at each other once again, and made conversation elsewhere.’
They looked at her, this time like the terrible sea creature had revealed talons and a bad dye job.
‘Okay, Tig, calm down.’ Dana made soothing noises. ‘I think Ame was trying to point out, in a very positive way, that it was nice to see you making an effort to welcome a new person to Entangled. Especially a person who happens to have a penis, because you’ve spent the last seven months wanting to chop off all the ones in the immediate vicinity, regardless of who they’re attached to.’
Tig blinked. ‘And that’s why you work in PR.’
She took a deep breath and tried not to blush as she thought about her overreaction. ‘I swear I never used to be so mean. Or angry. I mean, I’ve always had the ability to be a bitch …’
‘No, you haven’t,’ Dana smiled. ‘In fact, for the most part, you’ve always been a big hippie softie. Think you might have lost that somewhere along the way.’
‘Maybe Ruby’s right, maybe the Misery Dinners are making things worse,’ Tig shrugged, sipping her drink and sighing in relief.
‘They’re helping, Tig, honestly,’ Ame said forcefully.
‘So you’re done moaning about Clint? You’ve worked through that?’
‘He hurt me, Tig. That takes time …’ Ame shook her head. ‘You just don’t get it.’
Tig closed her eyes and took a deep breath, tucking her red hair behind her ears. Living with Ame had been a bad idea. When Darren had dumped her on Valentine’s Day, and Ame found out Clint was cheating, it made sense for them to move in together. And whine (with wine) together. Tig had given up the wedding photography business and Ame let her stay in the Hampstead flat for minimal rent, which she’d really appreciated. But Ame had started to become … difficult. She lived in a permanent state of outrage, and was getting more and more bitter. Which wasn’t helping Tig to become the glass-half-full type girl she’d been before, either.
You get hurt, you wallow, you move on. Those were the rules. Tig had spent the first few weeks after the break-up almost catatonic, permanently drunk and stoned, slowly eating her way through two hundred wedding cupcakes embossed with ‘Mr and Mrs’. The next couple of months she graduated to quietly drinking neat vodka, curled up on the sofa in front of romantic comedies, waiting until the final scene to shout, ‘Sure, it’s all great now, but wait until he leaves you because your tits got too small!’
But she was past that now. She was. She got dressed, she went to the gym. She could be trusted not to warp the world views of young children, and as of today she had interacted with a male without wincing. She was improving.
‘I know what it’s like to be hurt,’ Tig said calmly, ‘and I know what it feels like to get so bitter and twisted that you don’t really like yourself anymore. I want to be happy.’
Dana nodded, with that quiet, approving presence that she had. ‘That’s great. So are you going to start up the photography business again? Back to weddings?’
Tig’s stomach plummeted. Okay, so … maybe she wasn’t so ready. She could grow, and be happy, but being around weddings again? She still couldn’t look at her portfolio without crying. Her wedding dress was hanging in the back of her wardrobe almost a year later, with the ‘five days to go!’ tag still tied around the hanger.
The problem was, she was good at wedding photography. She’d been planning her and Darren’s big day for almost three years, and during that time, meeting other brides, retailers, she’d accidentally started a business. Become an institution. The other brides liked her because she was in the same situation as them; she knew what they wanted, because she wanted it too. She’d paid for the wedding with their weddings. She was so happy those three years, meeting all these people, making plans. Finally being able to pack in the insurance job to take photos for a living, the dream she’d had since uni. It was hard not to blame Darren for taking all that away. It was harder to stop blaming herself for letting it stay that way.
‘I’m … I’m going to find a way to use my skills without doing the wedding thing just yet … maybe, at some point. Just, not yet.’
She tried not to let her positive attitude be knocked down by lack of a plan. Or any plan. She couldn’t deal with photographing babies, their pudgy little alien faces gumming at her as she tried to get them to smile without puking everywhere. What did that leave? Being a camera assistant at Harry Potter World, most likely. London was teeming with unemployed artists, and every year she felt her chest constrict as another wave of graduates flooded into the job pool.
Her friends shrugged, and thankfully Dana started moaning about her client list, and her obsessive boss who kept changing the brief every thirty seconds, and Ame went back to Clint and the bitches at work, so Tig could sit and let it wash over her. She looked at her two friends, taking in Ame’s perfect skin and flawless make-up, Dana’s expensive suits and towering heels, and wondered what had happened. Surely it was only weeks ago they were at uni, drinking pink Lambrini through jumbo straws and wondering why everyone was into dubstep? Yet here they were, premature
ly middle-aged singletons, moaning about everything. At least Ame and Dana looked like adults, Tig thought sadly, looking down at her clothes. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn something that wasn’t tie-dye coloured or some sort of elasticated fabric. She was sure she used to wear clothes that weren’t yoga pants, once upon a time. When she’d first lost weight, she’d experimented wearing all those skimpy little clothes she’d never felt comfortable wearing, but the truth was, even a few stone lighter, she still didn’t feel comfortable. It just wasn’t her. So she’d reverted to her hippie clothing, and tried to ignore the fact that, more and more every day, she seemed to be turning into her parents.
The rest of the meal seem to pass easily enough, and Tig concentrated on focusing individually on their problems, but had long since stopped trying to offer solutions. Ame simply wanted to moan, and Dana seemed to offer up work problems because she didn’t want to moan about anything important, but didn’t want to be left out.
‘You coming?’ Ame asked, putting her coat on and leaving a tip on the table. Dana had already run for the DLR to get to Greenwich. Ame and Tig always travelled home together after the dinners, but tonight she just didn’t feel like it.
‘I’ve got to collect some stuff from Ruby, and then I think I might go to the studio for a few hours. All this talk about my photography has got me thinking,’ she lied, hoping Ame would just let it go for once.
‘You’re going to go now? How will you get home?’
‘Probably call Sergei for a cab, don’t worry about me.’ Tig hugged her best friend, inhaling the ever-present smell of Chanel No. 5 that had always defined her, even when they met in the bar during Freshers’ Week.
‘I’m not worried about you! What if I get attacked on the way home?’ Ame said, appalled. It took a second for that glint to appear in her eye, and for Tig to realise she was joking. It had been ages since she’d been able to properly read her best friend.
The minute Ame was through the door, Tig collapsed back into her chair, breathing a deep sigh of relief. It was the first time she’d felt able to breathe all night.
‘Here you go.’ The new barman reappeared with a large glass of red wine. ‘You look like you need it.’
‘I’ve been getting that a lot today,’ she frowned. ‘Do I look like an alcoholic?’
‘You look like someone sitting in a bar with a sad, wistful look. And when I bring women chocolate cake to cheer them up, they look at me like I’m the devil.’
Tig raised an eyebrow. ‘You need to hang out with better women.’
‘I’m trying,’ he grinned.
She tensed, then decided that maybe, yes, not every man needed the Wrath of Tig. Especially when they had green eyes and toned arms and tattoos. Not that he wouldn’t turn out to be a massive dick, and it wasn’t like it mattered, but … well, he was quite nice to look at. And he brought her wine. And there was the possibility that he might bring her cake.
‘We didn’t do the name thing,’ Tig gestured between them.
‘Right. I’m Ollie.’ He reached out to shake her hand, whilst she stared at him before shaking back briefly.
‘Formal. Okay.’
‘You’re Tig. Ruby said you’re a regular,’ Ollie nodded. ‘What’s Tig short for?’
‘Tigerlily.’
‘Bullshit!’ He laughed, and watched as she raised an eyebrow, crossing her arms.
‘Um, and by that I mean, my name is Ollie and I’m new here and nervous and jetlagged and once again going to use every excuse I can to undo what I just said. Tigerlily. I like it.’ He made a face, wincing at her to see if her stern impression had weakened. ‘How about if I give you free chocolate cake and back away slowly? That sound good?’
She broke, smiling a little to herself. Somehow he was even more appealing chewing at his lip, nervously dragging a hand across his jaw. It was nice not to be the one saying the wrong thing for once.
‘It’s okay. I get it a lot. My parents are hippies.’ She paused. ‘Also, today is the first time in months I’ve managed to talk to a man without wanting to throttle him for things that my ex did, so, you know, congratulations on that. I’m afraid I don’t have a prize for you.’
Ollie tilted his head to the side like he was trying to tell if she was joking. ‘Okay, in which case, definitely cake. Let’s try and keep this whole “not throttling me” business going.’
He had a nice voice, she decided, warm, with a slight American lilt behind the London sharpness. She wondered what that was about, whether he was jetlagged from a trip back from America. And then Tig realised it was none of her business. But she smiled again, and shrugged, because you never turn down cake. A yell from behind the bar broke the moment, and he grinned, saluting. ‘Lovely to meet you, Miss Tigerlily, I’ll return with your bribe momentarily.’ He went to walk away. ‘Oh, wait, Ruby said you’d left these papers here?’
He placed a collection of letters and notes on the table, smiling as he rushed back to the bar.
Tig traced the mosaic tabletop with her fingers, riffling through the papers absentmindedly as she sipped her wine. Things were changing, she could tell. Everything was already starting to get better. Her positive attitude had created a positive situation. Maybe this rut was finally done.
There was an unopened envelope in the pile, thick and cream, her name written in royal blue ink. It looked official. Tamara was probably getting married, or Dahlia, or any of the other nice enough posh birds from uni that she had never really been close to, but who still insisted on calling her ‘bestie’ and crushing her ribcage whenever she ran into them on Essex Road.
She opened it, noticing the sweet lace edging, the soft feel of the textured paper. Expensive. She’d spent ages looking at invitations. She’d gone with a more informal feel, more shabby chic, laid-back. More like them … like her.
She scanned through the parents to the names of the happy couple. She thought she would fall off her chair with the shock, and held tight to the table for fear the world was turning on its axis. Darren was getting married. The bastard.
*****
Her only choice was to get as drunk as possible. And it wasn’t far off closing time at Entangled.
‘Hey, Michelle?’ Tig waved over to the dark-haired girl behind the bar. ‘Could I have a bottle of red wine, two shots of sambuca, and absolutely no judgement, please?’
Michelle blinked a couple of times and then shrugged. ‘I’ll bring it over.’
That was how Tig came to be craned over the invitation, tracing the embossed lettering and wondering who the hell Abigail Jensen was.
‘Uh oh, what happened here?’ Ollie sat in the chair next to her.
‘Nothing,’ Tig grumbled, not looking up.
‘Well, when I left you ten minutes ago, there was a glass of wine. There is now half an empty bottle.’
‘Or half a full bottle,’ she said seriously, ‘plus two shots of sambuca. I hate sambuca.’
‘So …?’ Ollie tilted his head to the side again, and she got the feeling she was a fascinating exhibit in a museum, like a strangely grotesque thing you’d find in one of those old-fashioned circus acts. It was irritating.
‘Here,’ she thrust the invitation at him, and refilled her wine glass.
He held it close to his face, then held it at arm’s length, squinting. He looked at her, and said, ‘Well, that is tacky as fuck.’
‘Really?’ Tig replied, hopeful.
‘No idea, seemed the thing to say.’
Tig rolled her eyes, and slumped back in her chair, arms crossed.
‘Ex?’
‘Yup.’
‘How long?’
‘Broke up seven months ago …’
Ollie winced.
‘On Valentine’s Day… five days before our wedding,’ she finished. His eyebrows shot up.
Ollie ran a hand through his hair and sighed deeply, his eyes wandering around until they settled on her. Pity. She couldn’t stand pity.
‘Do you want
that cake now?’
‘Promises, promises,’ she said. ‘Thanks, but I think I’m okay.’
‘You do seem okay. How are you doing that?’
‘Sheer force of will,’ she exhaled, ‘and alcohol.’
She sipped at her wine, a little more delicately now, allowing the warmth to settle in on her. Ollie was a surprisingly comforting presence. Moaning at someone who didn’t really know you, didn’t try to fix everything. Maybe that’s what the Misery Dinners were trying to achieve, when really they all needed therapy.
‘So, why’d you break up?’
She tapped at the table, trying to find the best way to phrase it. She’d been asked that question so many times at the beginning. To strangers, she said it just didn’t work out, spared Darren for some reason. Some days, when she was feeling kind, it was that they were too young, the spark had gone, and you grow out of each other. But it was the sort of evening where she had to be brutally honest.
‘He dumped me because I started going to the gym and my tits got too small. Apparently.’
Ollie coughed. ‘Well, obviously he’s an idiot. A blind idiot. A massive, blind idiot.’
Tig grinned, somehow comforted when other people lost their cool.
‘Not that it’s polite to point such things out,’ he added primly, ‘but really … your boobs are magnificent.’
‘Magnificent?’ She tilted her head to the side.
‘Not that I’ve looked. But you know, peripherally, the idea of them that I got from only looking at your face during all our interactions would suggest that they’re magnificent.’
She snorted. ‘Thanks, I think.’
‘You are most sincerely welcome, Tigerlily,’ he grinned.
What was going on here? Why was he sitting with her, listening to her moan, offering her cake and telling her how great her boobs were? Was he trying to make sure she was on his side, knowing Ruby would probably ask her opinion on the new bar staff? Ame would have told her to stop being an idiot and realise he was trying to shag her. Dana would have shrugged and said she really didn’t get men and their motivations. He was painfully beautiful. Thick Bambi lashes and green eyes that seemed a little too bright to be natural. She felt awfully plain around him, sitting in her yoga pants, clutching her wine glass, tugging at her red braid. There would have been a time when she’d have walked in, and talked to Ollie without thinking anything of it. Not questioning his motivations, just secure in knowing that she was a good enough person to talk to. Funny how dropping a few dress sizes had changed the game. Well, that and Darren.
If You Don't Know Me by Now Page 22
